Stockton couple enjoy life in Stagg's old home

A niche at Manteca'a Park View Cemetery and Funeral Home marks the death of Amos Alonzo Stagg, the legendary football coach who led College of the Pacific from 1933-1946.

Lori Gilbert

A niche at Manteca'a Park View Cemetery and Funeral Home marks the death of Amos Alonzo Stagg, the legendary football coach who led College of the Pacific from 1933-1946.

A plaque in the front lawn of a Stockton home on West Euclid, built in 1924, marks where he lived.

Alan and Dianne England have lived in the home since 1978 and have owned it since 1982 when they purchased it from Marc Jantzen, longtime dean of University of the Pacific's School of Education.

Curiosity seekers still stop by on occasion to take pictures or look at the plaque that reads:

"Stockton Home of Amos Alonzo Stagg

1932-1964

Athlete, coach, inspiration.

A gentle man.

A collegiate football giant."

The plaque was donated by the Pacific Athletic Foundation, although it's a replacement. The original plaque, dedicated in1968, was bronze and installed by residents of the neighborhood known as Pacific Manor.

The current stone marker is decaying and difficult to read, but it is still striking and an attention getter.

The Englands always have taken the attention their house receives in stride, even embraced it.

"One time I looked out and a man was taking pictures of the house," recalled Alan England, 65, a retired probation officer and family counselor. "He was a retired professor from Indiana. He was taking a cross-country tour using the Lincoln Highway Guidebook. There was a mention of the Stagg house in the Lincoln Highway Guidebook. I never saw it. That, to me, was so cool."

Other visitors have had more personal ties.

"For a while we would get former players coming by and knocking on the door," said Dianne England, 64, a professional singer who teaches voice at San Joaquin Delta College. "We had former neighbors come by."

The visitors always are respectful, which seems only fitting as Amos Alonzo Stagg always was about respect and doing the right thing.

Although he was noted for his innovations as a football coach, for helping James Naismith establish the rules of a new game called basketball, and for holding the record for most wins by a football coach at 314 until Paul "Bear" Bryant surpassed him in 1981, Stagg was first and foremost, a teacher.

A one-time divinity student, he turned fields of sports into his pulpits, from where he could guide young men to be honorable, hard-working and dedicated.

He arrived at College of the Pacific in 1933 at the age of 70, having been forced to retire, because of his age, from the University of Chicago after 41 years as its football coach and physical education dean.

Stagg and Stella, his wife, his assistant coach and the love of his life, rented the home near the campus on West Euclid, never thinking they'd stay in Stockton for 31 years.

"Pacific moved here (from San Jose) in 1924 and this neighborhood was developed at that time," Alan England said. "(The school) bought the land at that time and sold parcels to the professors."

"The person who originally owned (the England home where the Staggs lived) was an English classics professor," Dianne England said. "I think he was only here a few years and left. He and his family kept the house and rented it to the Staggs. When the Staggs died, that family no longer wanted this house, so the Jantzens bought it and rented it out for years."

After renting it four years, the Englands offered to purchase the home and the Jantzens agreed.

The Englands, who raised their two children in the home - Patrick now 37 and Heather, 34 - added a master bedroom and bathroom 25 years ago and enlarged the kitchen 10 years ago.

What they have not done is change the look of the home, using the familiar siding on all the additions. The front looks the same as it did when it was occupied by the Staggs, right down to the cream colored paint. The Englands did change the trim from black to green, and the front yard that Stagg mowed with a push mower until he was 92, has been altered. Alan England admits he has someone else mow his lawn.

But, sit down with the Englands in the cozy living room or walk through the adjoining dining room and the image of a photo of the Staggs, seated at their dining room table with the window and built-in cabinets in the background, comes to mind.

The backyard fig trees Stagg was known to run around are gone, replaced by redwoods and birches. When one visitor asked about the fig trees, Alan England told him "George Washington cut them down."

Unknowingly, Dianne England connected to previous owners when she picked out wallpaper for the living room and dining room. As she was removing old paper from the walls that had long been painted over, she discovered the old wallpaper had the same colors and design of wallpaper she'd picked out.

Alan England, the son of a minister who moved to Stockton when he was 7, doesn't believe in spirits or ghosts . The Staggs, long-gone from the home, remain a part of it through photos and memories. Stagg left the home in 1962 because of failing health and lived out his final years in Hillhaven Nursing Home. He died on March 17, 1965 at 104, eight months after Stella, his wife of 69 years, died in July, 1964 at the age of 89.

Dianne England, who grew up in south Stockton, barely knew of Stagg, other than his name.

Alan England saw him once, while touring Hillhaven, but has better images of the man who once prowled the halls of his home.

"I went to Stagg High School, and Stagg, to me, was a god," Alan England said. "For a long time there was a case when you walked into the office with a book about him, and blow up pictures and memorabilia. ... It's kind of humbling. In some ways he was kind of a role model, knowing the energy level of this guy. He never stopped."

Alan England was never "a sports person," but he has a stationary bike in one room, a treadmill in another and a rowing machine in a third. He laughs that they haven't made him thin, but they keep him healthy, and somehow you have to believe their presence would please Stagg.

The Staggs never bought a home in Stockton. The only land they bought was 40 acres that cost them $3,000 and it was donated to Pacific to build its new stadium.

That stadium would eventually bear his name, but Amos Alonzo Stagg Memorial Stadium was demolished this year.

There's no more seeing the house that Stagg built in Stockton, but the Englands are happy for visitors to see the house where Stagg lived.